The updated Child Tax Credit, as part of the most recent stimulus package, is scheduled to start in July, will millions of parents eligible for monthly payments.<\/b>
\n(CBS Detroit) \u2014 The updated Child Tax Credit (CTC) will mean a sort of monthly stimulus check for most parents and guardians. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has sent letters to the approximately 36 million families that may qualify for advance CTC payments. The Treasury Department and IRS have also announced the official July start date for the updated credit, as laid out in the American Rescue Plan. But future recipients may still be unsure how much they can expect The Child Tax Credit was established over two decades ago to help qualified taxpayers with the cost of raising children. But the most recent $1.9 trillion COVID relief package seeks to give parents a little more support. The credit will now be worth as much as $3,600 per kid for the year. And money that was once was claimed only at tax time will go out in installments, at least in 2021. How much will those installments be, and when will they arrive? Let\u2019s find out. For parents of children up to age five, the IRS will pay a total of $3,600, half as six monthly payments and half as a 2021 tax credit. That changes to $3,000 total for each child ages six through 17. The IRS will make a one-time payment of $500 for dependents age 18 or fulltime college students up through age 24. Payments will be based on the modified adjusted gross income (AGI) reflected on a parent or parents\u2019 2020 tax filing. (AGI is the sum of one\u2019s wages, interest, dividends, alimony, retirement distributions and other sources of income minus certain deductions, such as student loan interest, alimony payments and retirement contributions.) The amount phases out at a rate of $50 for every $1,000 of annual income beyond $75,000 for an individual and beyond $150,000 for a married couple. The benefit will be fully refundable, meaning it will not depend on the recipient\u2019s current tax burden. Qualifying families will receive the full amount, regardless of how much \u2014 or how little \u2014 they owe in taxes. There is no limit to the number of dependents that can be claimed. As an example, suppose a married couple has a four-year-old child and an eight-year-old child and showed an annual joint income of $120,000 on their 2020 taxes. The IRS would send them a monthly check for $550 starting in July. That\u2019s $300 per month ($3,600 \/ 12) for the younger child and $250 per month ($3,000 \/ 12) for the older child. Those checks would last through December. The couple would then receive the $3,300 balance \u2014 $1,800 ($300 X 6) for the younger child and $1,500 ($250 X 6) for the older child \u2014 as part of their 2021 tax refund. Parents of a child who ages out of an age bracket will be paid the lesser amount. That means if a five-year-old turns six in 2021, the parents will receive a total credit of $3,000 for the year, not $3,600. Likewise, if a 17-year-old turns 18 in 2021, the parents will receive $500, not $3,000. An income increase in 2021 to an amount above the $75,000 ($150,000) threshold could lower a household\u2019s Child Tax Credit. The IRS recently confirmed that it will set up a portal to allow claimants to adjust their income and custodial information, thus lowering their payments. Failure to do so could increase your tax bill or reduce your tax refund once 2021 taxes are filed. Recipients will also be able to use the portal to opt out of periodic payments in favor of a one-time credit at tax time. The portal should be up and running before July 1. Eligibility requires that the dependent be a part of the household for at least half of the year and be at least half supported by the taxpayer. A taxpayer who makes above $95,000 ($170,000) \u2014 where the income limits phase out \u2014 will not be eligible for the expanded credit. But they can still claim the existing $2,000 credit per child. Families who receive a qualifying letter will subsequently receive a second letter estimating the amount. \u201cBig changes to the way that the tax credit is structured,\u201d says Stephen Nu\u00f1ez, the Lead Researcher on Guaranteed Income at the Jain Family Institute, an applied research organization in the social sciences. (Nu\u00f1ez studies cash welfare policy, that includes field work to answer policy-relevant questions about the social safety net.) \u201cMuch more generous, fully refundable, no longer any work requirement\u2026\u201d Child Tax Credit payments will be automatically deposited on a monthly basis starting July 15. Each subsequent payment will be issued on the 15th of the month through December of 2021. If the 15th is a weekend or holiday, the money will arrive on the closest prior business day. (August 15, for example, falls on a Sunday, so that month\u2019s payment will arrive August 13.) The remaining balance will be issued as a credit when the recipient files their 2021 taxes. Most of those who are eligible will not have to do anything to receive payments. The payments will just start based on the information the IRS already has on file. The revised Child Tax Credit is scheduled to apply to 2021. The rules of reconciliation, which Democrats used to push through the stimulus package containing the expanded credit with a simple majority, don\u2019t allow for deficit spending. Legislation must be deficit-neutral or deficit-reducing for the year, as well as for the next five years and 10 years. The thinking was that political pressure from supporters of a widely popular program will force Congress to extend it in the years to come. Biden has since come out in support of extending the enhanced credit until 2025 as part of his American Families Plan. The plan, worth approximately $1.8 trillion, seeks to address inadequacies in childcare, education and paid leave. A fact sheet on the plan calls it \u201can investment in our children and our families\u2014helping families cover the basic expenses that so many struggle with now, lowering health insurance premiums, and continuing the American Rescue Plan\u2019s historic reductions in child poverty.\u201d A recent statement from the president once again urged Congress to extend the updated Child Tax Credit. \u201cThe American Rescue Plan is delivering critical tax relief to middle class and hard-pressed working families with children,\u201d the statement reads. \u201cCongress must pass the American Families Plan to ensure that working families will be able to count on this relief for years to come.\u201d Many Democrats want to go a step further and make the revised Child Tax Credit permanent. Massachusetts Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, made public back in April a plan to do just that. The suggested change came as part of a broader draft proposal to guarantee paid family leave and access to childcare. How much influence this ultimately has on the American Families Plan is unclear. The American Families Plan, in its proposed form, faces a tough path through Congress. The enhanced Child Tax Credit would be available to about 39 million families, accounting for 65 million children, according to the Biden administration. That covers around 88 percent of the nation\u2019s children. Approximately 13 percent of households with children faced food insecurity due to lack of money, according to Census data from late May of 2021. About 20 percent of renting households with children were behind on their rent, according to the same data. Early estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggest that expanding the Child Tax Credit will push 4.1 million children beyond the poverty line. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot more generous,\u201d Nu\u00f1ez confirms. \u201cIt\u2019s fully refundable, and it no longer has a work requirement. So that means that it is going to be particularly important for the poorest households, those who earn nothing, or who earn less than $2,500 a year in taxable income. There have been some simulations, some analyses of this particular plan that suggest that these changes are enough on their own to cut the child poverty rate in the United States by somewhere around 40 percent.\u201d \u201cSo it\u2019s actually a huge impact on child poverty in the United States, Nu\u00f1ez continues. \u201cAnd this is consistent with what we\u2019ve seen happen in other countries that have also introduced something like a child allowance. So, this kind of policy, although it\u2019s implemented and administered in different ways in different countries, is fairly common. It exists in Canada, it exists in the UK, in Germany, and other places in the world. And, in those places, it has had very similar results, cutting child poverty by a third or by 50 percent, relative to the baseline.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s good that we\u2019re reducing poverty,\u201d says Yeva Nersisyan, Associate Professor of Economics at Franklin & Marshall College. \u201cAnd the fact that we could reduce it with a tax credit increase that\u2019s not dramatic \u2014 we might be almost doubling it, but in dollar terms is not that much \u2014 so the fact that we could have done that and we hadn\u2019t done it sooner, I think it\u2019s kind of outrageous. But it also tells you that the way we think about poverty \u2014 the poverty line, where were we put it (which is at an annual income of $26,500 for a family of four) \u2014 it\u2019s not really realistic.\u201d \u201cSo that\u2019s why a little bit more money can push you over the poverty line,\u201d Nersisyan continues. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean you\u2019re not poor in a more realistic sense.\u201d In what appears to be a coincidence of timing, the updated Child Tax Credit will start soon after many states stop accepting the federal unemployment benefit bonus for its citizens. These states, all led by Republicans, have announced the discontinuation of the $300 federal unemployment benefit bonus for their citizens ahead of the official Labor Day end date. Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, and Missouri stopped benefits on June 12. Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, and Nebraska are among the states stopping benefits on June 19. Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas follow on June 26. A total of 25 states will cut off federal unemployment benefits early. (Louisiana, which has a Democratic governor, is also considering the move.) The additional money from the Child Tax Credit will offset some of the $300 per week that the unemployed will lose. Some research suggests that reducing poverty would also have knock-on effects in the broader economy. The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine released a report in 2019 called A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty that looked at how to cut poverty in half. It concluded that \u201cthe weight of the causal evidence does indeed indicate that income poverty itself causes negative child outcomes, especially when poverty occurs in early childhood or persists throughout a large portion of childhood.\u201d The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also found that income support leads to better health outcomes. People with more money can generally better provide for their children. That could mean healthier food, better housing, more frequent medical care, less stress, and so much more. As Nu\u00f1ez explains, \u201cthe reason why they\u2019re interested in reducing child poverty, in addition to child poverty being bad, is that there\u2019s some research that suggests that child poverty costs the U.S. economy, somewhere in the range of 800 billion to $1.1 trillion each year, because of higher crime, because of poor health outcomes for poorer children, and lower income levels, when they grow up. If you believe that estimate is largely correct, then cutting child poverty in half could have an enormous benefit to the economy as well. So not only is it helping children, reducing suffering. But in the U.S., these sorts of programs could pay for themselves.\u201d The investment could very well pay off in the long run, on both the individual and national scale. People would be healthier and better educated, and then grow up to be more productive members of society. As the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University points out in a February brief, \u201ccash and near-cash benefits increase children\u2019s health, education, and future earnings and decrease health, child protection, and criminal justice costs.\u201d According to their calculations, \u201cconverting the current Child Tax Credit to a child allowance \u2026 would cost about $100 billion and would generate about $800 billion in benefits to society.\u201d In a more theoretical sense, the Child Tax Credit will make the tax structure a little more progressive. Those earning less in income will ultimately pay less in taxes because of the credit. And by comparison, those earning more will pay more. As Nersisyan points out, \u201cany policy that makes your tax system more progressive is good for demand, because people at the lower end of the income distribution tend to have a high propensity to consume. So if you give $1 to somebody who\u2019s close to the poverty line, they\u2019re likely to spend all of that money. If you give an extra dollar to somebody who\u2019s making $200,000 or $300,000 a year, they\u2019re not likely to spend a lot of that dollar. They\u2019re likely to save most of it.\u201d \u201cIt keeps demand higher in the economy,\u201d Nersisyan continues. \u201cHigher demand is good because then that encourages more investment, increases productivity and so on so forth.\u201d A program to distribute monthly checks to millions of families brings with it plenty of administrative challenges. That\u2019s a big reason why payments are scheduled to start four months after the bill was passed. \u201cThey\u2019re going to be standing up a program that is very operationally complex,\u201d according to Nu\u00f1ez. \u201cThe IRS is not set up currently to provide regular monthly payments or regular quarterly payments. It\u2019s just not something that they\u2019ve done historically. There\u2019s also been at least a decade of underfunding. So they\u2019re also fairly poorly funded at this point.\u201d A recent blog post from National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins cites limited resources and technology issues as reasons for delays in processing tax returns. But those shortcomings also affect other initiatives, like the revised Child Tax Credit. Congress has continually reduced the agency\u2019s budget over the last decade; funding is down by about 21 percent. That\u2019s left the IRS short on what it needs to accomplish its initiatives. An IRS watchdog informed Congress that budget cuts limit the agency\u2019s ability to keep up with technology. The agency has long relied on an old programming language called COBOL. That isn\u2019t necessarily a problem, unless the code isn\u2019t kept up to date. And the IRS hasn\u2019t kept it up to date. So when changes to the tax code come along, the agency has to find and pay programmers to fix things. The IRS initiated a modernization effort in 2019, but it relied on future funding. President Biden is also looking to increase the agency\u2019s budget by $1.2 billion in the 2022 fiscal year. None of this will help in the short-term, however. Sending out Child Tax Credit payments on a regular basis presents unique challenges. There\u2019s the task of finding all the people who should receive the money, communicating to them that this money is out there and they qualify for it, and then getting them into the system. Nu\u00f1ez estimates that somewhere around 35 or 40 percent of children who live in poverty also live in households that don\u2019t file taxes. \u201cThose families that make $2,000 a year adjusted income or don\u2019t work at all, generally don\u2019t file their taxes,\u201d says Nu\u00f1ez. \u201cAnd those are the families that are going to receive the most out of this kind of benefit. So there\u2019s going to be a big push. There\u2019s going to have to be a very big push, where government works with nonprofit partners and others in the field to identify and reach out to these sort of most vulnerable families, the ones that are going to benefit the most from this, and make sure that they understand that this benefit exists and how to get it.\u201d The Biden administration recently communicated that it will be setting up a second portal for non-tax filers to sign up. Its focus will be on helping the extremely poor and homeless get their benefit. And then there are those families experiencing some sort of upheaval in their living arrangements. If parents have recently divorced, the IRS won\u2019t necessarily have up-to-date information reflecting new households. Payments will likely be issued based on the most recent information available, which may not be accurate or address the current need. These issues will be addressed through a separate portal, the same one as for income adjustments. Implementation challenges in the initial stages shouldn\u2019t detract from the passage of a program that could change the lives of millions. According to Nu\u00f1ez, \u201cthe big takeaway is even if this is a rough start, even if it has some implementation challenges and on the margins, some people are not getting it that we\u2019d like to get, it\u2019s still going to have a huge impact.\u201d Originally published Thursday, May 20 at 11:17 a.m. ET.<\/p>\n